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I found my old computer, which was working perfectly before I stored it away. However, now that I've found it, it no longer displays any image on the screen.

The computer specs are:

  • AMD athlon 64x,
  • DDR2 1Gb ram kingmax,
  • Asus m2n 1394,
  • GeForce gf9400gt
  • and a 450 watts power supply.

All I want to see is the BIOS. I tried with other ram sticks and video cards, and I got no beeps absolutely nothing. One thing that I noticed is when I connect a hard disk to the pc, the pc starts the disk much later than it should and when it does, it makes clicking noises. (The HDD works fine in other builds)

A-Tech
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martinez
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1 Answers1

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There are two items which commonly decay even if a computer is not used.

  1. The battery for CMOS.
  2. Capacitors.

If the battery is empty then you stil should get a beep and it still should boot. Though likely to the firmware screen with 'invalid CMOS settings' or similar.

Capacitors are much more tricky. They are everywhere and they just seem do die after some years. And ofcourse at unpredictable times. And they can die on your motherboard rendering that broken or in the PSU the graphics card, ...

But you do not need much to get at least a boot beep and some LEDs lighting up.

  • Working PSU
  • Working motheroard
  • Working CPU (which should not die from old age so assuming this one is fine)
  • Attached speaker for the beep.

Your old PC is still modern enough that the PSU should be compatiple with many other boards and vice versa your motherboard likel accepts current ower supplies. So it should be possible to test if the PSU is OK or is broken.

If it is not then I is visual inspection time for the motherboard for bulging capacitors.

Hennes
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